


Make This Leap

by TheJemi



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s05e03 Four Walls and a Roof, Everyone is around, F/M, Missing Scene, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 08:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2765894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheJemi/pseuds/TheJemi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We can stay,” he protested,  and even though he knows they can’t he wants to imagine for just a moment that they can.  - Episode tag for 503 Four Walls and a Roof.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make This Leap

The bodies are covered up with sheets. They’ll be taken outside in the morning. He expects Rick to find him, talk to talk to him once the other man has seen to his family. He’s on borrowed time and he needs to talk to his wife before this goes any further. He sweeps his eyes over the others – Tara, who follows him so willingly it scares him, Abraham, who has made him make this choice, Michonne, who is turned away from him but knows won’t fight him. He spots Maggie, slumped in the back corner, as far away from the bodies as she could be. Glenn heaves a weary sigh and makes his way towards her, letting his back slide down the wall. She’s got her legs stretched out in front of her and it strikes him then just how long her legs are. He stretches out next to her, shoulder to shoulders and nudges her foot with his.

He expects….Glenn doesn’t actually know what he expects. Anger? Frustration? Shock? Annoyance? Whatever he had been excepting, it’s certainly not the weary resignation that has settled itself over Maggie’s features.

“I didn’t…” he starts to speak but winds up sighing instead. “I didn’t mean to speak for us. We can find another way if you want.”

Maggie, to his immense relief, leans her head on his shoulder and threads her fingers through his. He’s missed her so much that even this, just being this close to her makes his heart burst in his chest.  She shakes her head against his shoulder. “You made a promise, Glenn.”

He had made a promise. She’d understood, he thought, in that moment when all he could do was stare and hope she understood what had to be done. Their friends were missing. They were all out there, all missing. Maybe injured, maybe worse. He didn’t want to think about what could be worse. Rick. Carl. Michonne. Sasha. They were a family. Could they seriously leave their family? If they had to, he could. He’d done it before, when he’d left his parents and sisters in Michigan.

“Beth’s out there,” Maggie said, her voice muffled by his shirt. Glenn clenches his eyes shut. He hadn’t given a single thought to Maggie wanting to find her sister, because of course she’d want to follow a lead on Beth. What kind of person does that make him? Beth was her family - the only family she really had, and one she thought was dead until a fee days before. “Beth’s out there and we’re going to _Washington_.”

He tries not to hear the accusation in her voice, because he’d be putting it there himself. She doesn’t blame him. She wouldn’t have agreed to go if she didn’t think it was the right things to do. Washington was inevitable. It had been since he’d run into three strangers. Inevitable for him, for Maggie, for Tara – he hoped that it would be inevitable from Rick now, too. But there was something brewing in the other man, something dark and vengeful; something Glenn wasn’t sure he wanted to stick around for.

“Daryl will find her. I know it,” Maggie squeezed his hand and Glenn wondered what he missed. He’d been so focused in the train car, trying to help Rick come up with a plan to get them all out alive, that he’d pad very little attention to the archer and his wife, sitting in the corner speaking softly to each other. “Daryl will find her and Rick will bring them to Washington.”

“We can stay,” he protested,  and even though he knows they can’t he wants to imagine for just a moment that they can. That they can make this work. He wasn’t sure what to do with the finality in her voice, the resignation in her words. “I can’t…I shouldn’t have assumed you’d walk away. Not from Beth.”

Maggie presses her face into his shoulder and shakes her head. “I’m trying to tell you you’re right. I miss Beth. I miss her so much that I can barely stand, but I thought she was dead and the only person who knows where to look for her is gone. These people are our _family_ , Glenn. We have to trust them. Daryl will find Beth, and they’ll all come to Washington.”

“We can wait – I can talk to Abraham-”

“There’s not going to be any talking to him,” Maggie pulled her head from his shoulder, but Glenn averted his eyes. “If we don’t go, Rick won’t follow. Simple as that.”

“We can convince him after Daryl…” Glenn lets himself trail off. He can feel the intensity of her stare and so he brings his eyes up to meet her. There’s something swimming behind her eyes, something he recognizes but can’t place. Something that he’s seen before but doesn’t know where.

“What about Judith? Or our babies? What kind of world are we leaving for them?” Maggie’s voice has become strained and tight. Her question and seemingly abrupt change of tactic catches him off guard and he can’t stop himself from dropping his eyes to her stomach – it’d been long enough that they’d know if she was (right?), but he can’t stop the panic that grips him, visions of Lori bouncing around his memory, taunting him. Glenn lifts his eyes back to her face when he hears her take a deep, shuddering breath, “I don’t want this life for them. Not for Beth or Carl either, but they’ve seen so much and I…I can’t take that back. Rick can’t…he can’t see it right now. He’s thinking of us and everyone that’s come after us and that’s…that’s what he does, he protects us. But Glenn, if we can save Eugene, if he can really fix it then we have to _try_ , don’t we?”

Glenn nods along as she speaks and presses a kiss to the top of her head when she’s finished. He thinks about the prison again, so far away now, in those weeks where they’d been sure she’d been pregnant, of how terrified he was for her, the echo of fear he still felt coiled tightly in his chest – for what she’d have to go through, if it would be like Lori all over again, if their baby would be fine, if it would know its mother – and…he knows she’s right.  He wants the life that Eugene can possibly give them, and he wants it with her. He wants it so badly it’s as real to him as the wall at his back, the line of dark, wooden pews in front of him. He wants a life and he wants one with her. He wants it with the woman who rode up on horseback to find the mother of a boy she didn’t know. He wants it with the woman who pushed him to do more than survive.  He always has. Agreeing to help save the world wanting to have a life doesn’t make him _selfish_ , it makes him human.  Taking a deep breath, Glenn nods  at his wife, “We go?”

 A grim, broken expression settles itself over Maggie’s features, but she nods back. “We go.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been trying to get this out since the night the episode aired, but Maggie has been a little all over the place this season and I wanted to see how that played out in the midseason finale. Well then. I agree with a lot of people that it's kind of nonsense that she hasn't been worried about Beth, but I also think there's something more going on with her than we know yet. There's another piece I'm working on to deal with the midseason finale that's been much more difficult, but I wanted this out first. It struck me as odd that Maggie would willingly follow along to Washington, and without even a discussion that we get to see, so this is my response. Title comes from a line in Sheppard's Geronimo, which if you haven't heard yet, you should go and listen to. I hope you enjoyed!


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